My use of Aperture has grown organically and I now find myself in a bit of a pickle. I started using Aperture on my iMac desktop, where I now have a 100GB library on the internal hard drive. I then purchased a MacBook Pro and installed Aperture there. I have a separate library of about 300GB there.

It is silly to have separate Aperture libraries. I believe that I have the means to merge these libraries: http://support.apple.com/kb/VI159 However, this does not solve all of my problems.

Neither my MacBook nor my MBP possesses enough head room to contain the merged library. Okay, I've got plenty of external harddrives that can serve that purpose. Is the following procedure correct, assuming I wish to consolidate the libraries on a hard drive near my desk top?

Connect hard drive with sufficient space to iMac.

Relocate iMac's Aperture Library to hard drive.

With MBP on the network, merge its library into the "master" library on the hard drive.

If I understand this correctly, the Aperture library on my MBP will be emptied into the master library (or could thereafter be deleted). I could move projects back to the MBP if I needed to carry them with me.

What leaves me a bit confused is that the Apple documentation suggests that only masters are merged. What about versions as well? I wouldn't want to lose all of the changes I made to the masters.

Once I clean up the MPB internal storage to below 256 GB, then I can consider getting one of the newfangled rMBP with 256 GB flash. Perhaps all of this isn't as complicated as it seems, but I've not been down this road and there's much at risk with all of my images.

In perture a project is a self contained object that has all the images and the edits and meta data. If the same image is now in two projects on two computers, then after to move them you will have two images in two projects on one computer.

I recommend that you delete 50% of your photos. I am confident that a 300 gigabyte library is riddled with duplicates, redundant and reject photos.
Everything on your computer, hardrive and Aperture get easier if you keep only your best and most sentimental photos.
Its hard work but worth it.

I recommend that you delete 50% of your photos. I am confident that a 300 gigabyte library is riddled with duplicates, redundant and reject photos.
Everything on your computer, hardrive and Aperture get easier if you keep only your best and most sentimental photos.
Its hard work but worth it.

You are right. Culling will improve the average quality of the library. It is easy to look at 8 images and find the worst two and trash those. Do this periodically.